Speech enabling mechanisms have been developed that allow a user of a computer system to verbally communicate with a computer system. Examples of speech recognition products that convert speech into text strings that can be utilized by software applications on a computer system include the ViaVoice™ product from IBM®, Armonk, N.Y., and NaturallySpeaking Professional from Dragon Systems, Newton, Mass.
In particular a user may communicate through a microphone with a software application that displays output in a window on the display screen of the computer system. For example, a user can communicate with a word processing application to input text that is entered into a document file being presented in a window. Next, the user can select another speech-enabled application with an input device, such as a mouse or keyboard. The user can also select another speech-enabled application by explicitly giving a spoken command to select that application (e.g., “switch to calendar”). Then, the user can provide speech input through the microphone to that application. For example, a user can use the mouse to select the window for a calendar application (or provide an explicit selection command for that application), which then pops to the foreground, obscuring the previously displayed foreground application, such as a word processing application. Then, the user can provide a speech utterance, such as commands or sentence fragments, to be entered to the calendar application. After speaking to the calendar application, the user can use an input device to select the window for another application, such as the word processing application, bring the window forward for that application and then commence providing a speech utterance for that application, and so on.